Please contact David Pratt at Chemistry (pratt+@pitt.edu) if you would like to meet with the speaker during his visit on October 1st.
Time/Date:
12:00 noon, October 1st, 2004
Professor
Steven G. Boxer
Department
of Chemistry
Stanford
University
During the past few years, our lab has developed a wide range of methods for patterning lipid bilayers on solid supports [Accts. Chem. Res. 35, 149 (2002)]. These 2D fluids are interesting both as a model for biological membranes and as a physical system with unusual properties. Methods have been developed for controlling the composition of patterned membrane corrals by variations on microcontact printing and microfluidics. Molecules can be moved around within these fluid surfaces by a form of 2D electrophoresis. These methods can be combined to pattern and manipulate vesicles that are tethered to fluid bilayers by short complimentary DNA sequences. Once tethered, vesicles are laterally mobile in the plane of the supported bilayer. Arrays of corrals can be used to tether and sort vesicles displaying the complimentary sequence, and different vesicles can have different contents, lipid composition and/or membrane-associated proteins encoded by the corresponding oligonucleotide sequence. Because the vesicles are laterally mobile, individual vesicle-vesicle interactions, mediated by different components on the vesicle surface or in solution, can be observed directly. The planar geometry of supported bilayer systems is ideal for high resolution imaging methods. Advances using optical interferometry and mass spectrometry will be described.
Biographical Sketch
Professor Steven G. Boxer
Dr. Boxer is Camille and Henry Dreyfus Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University.
He holds a PhD degree in physical and physical-organic chemistry from the University of Chicago. His research is in the area of physical and biophysical chemistry and biotechnology, and investigates supported lipid bilayers, electrostatics and dynamics in proteins, photosynthesis, Stark effect spectroscopy, and green fluorescent protein. Professor Boxer is Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.